Science opportunities of wet extreme mass-ratio inspirals
Phys. Rev. D 113, 043002 – Published 3 February, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/337c-g6x1
Abstract
Wet extreme mass-ratio inspirals (wet EMRIs), which arise from stellar-mass black holes inspiral into supermassive black holes (SMBHs) within the gas-rich environments of active galactic nuclei (AGN), are primary sources of gravitational waves (GWs) for space-borne detectors such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, TianQin, and Taiji. Unlike “dry EMRIs,” which form through gravitational scattering in nuclear star clusters, wet EMRIs are naturally accompanied by interactions with accretion disks, offering rich multi-messenger science opportunities. They are distinct in generating transient electromagnetic (EM) signals, such as quasiperiodic eruptions, which serve as valuable probes of accretion disk physics and SMBH environments. Their GW signals provide an unprecedented precision of the order of in measuring SMBH mass and spin, enabling the calibration of traditional EM techniques and offering insights into jet formation models. Additionally, wet EMRIs serve as bright and dark sirens for cosmology, facilitating percent-level precision measurements of Hubble parameter through AGN host identification or statistical association. These systems hold immense potential for advancing our understanding of black hole dynamics, accretion physics, and cosmology.
